St. John’s, quite simply, better than Villanova Saturday

By AARON BRACY

January 6, 2024

Big5Hoops.com

VILLANOVA, Pa. – Sometimes, the answers are simple.

There are statistics. Explanations. Analysis.

More statistics. More explanations. More analysis.

Sometimes, though, it’s simple. You don’t need any of that stuff. Your eyes tell you everything you need to know:

One team is just better than the other.

That was the case here at the Pavilion on Saturday. Right from the jump, starting with Joel Soriano’s dunk to start the game and the eight straight St. John’s points that followed it, the Red Storm were just better than Villanova.

St. John’s 81, Villanova 71. 

And it wasn’t really that close.

The Red Storm turned that 10-0 lead into a 24-9 advantage with 9:13 left in the first half. Eric Dixon got going late in the first half offensively, and the Wildcats were within six points at the break.

But St. John’s ran off eight of the first 10 points to start the second half to take a 42-30 lead. Villanova never really got seriously back into the game after that.

“It’s a great win for us,” St. John’s coach Rick Pitino said. “The future is going to take care of itself if we keep playing like that.”

Villanova, meantime, has work to do.

The Wildcats have been very uneven this season, looking great one moment, like in the Bahamas and at Creighton, and not great the next, like against the Big 5 and Saturday afternoon.

Certainly, it would’ve helped to have Justin Moore in the lineup. He missed his fifth straight contest with a right knee sprain, suffered on Dec. 5. Still, St. John’s was without Chris Ledlum and his 11.0 points and 8.0 rebounds per contest. 

So, let’s call it an even tradeoff.

The bottom line: St. John’s was the better team.

But, for fun and because that’s what we do, let’s look at the statistics, explanations and analysis.

Statistics

Villanova is just not a great shooting team from the outside. The Wildcats will need to figure out how to get better, whether it’s with their current group or addressing it after the season through the transfer portal.

They were 6 of 28 (21.4 percent) from long range against the Red Storm, dropping their season average to 32.6 percent from the arc. Take out the 25-for-65 shooting in buy games against Le Moyne and American, and Villanova is shooting 31.6 percent from distance. 

Explanations

Kyle Neptune:

“I thought they came out and played their game to perfection. Dictated the tempo, dictated how the game was going to be played, played to their strengths. Played harder than us.”

“They just affected us with their pressure. They just pressed us. That’s what we do. We’ve gone against pressure. Most times, we’ve done pretty well against it.  It’s kind of their identity and they executed it.”

“They knew what we were going to do. We knew what they were going to do. They did it better than we did.”

Eric Dixon

“Pressure is what they’re into. They came up with a really good game plan and executed.”

Analysis

I thought Villanova played very hard. No shortage of effort from my perspective. 

True, St. John’s applied pressure defense. But I don’t think it really affected Villanova very much. The Wildcats didn’t turn the ball over much (11). Villanova was getting good looks. They just weren’t making them.

Villanova’s defense is excellent, but the ball still needs to go in the basket.

For me, this game was about the Wildcats just not being able to convert offensively.

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In the end, though, we could spew statistics, listen to explanations and present analysis and overanalysis.

However, sometimes, it’s really not that hard to figure out:

St. John’s was just a better team than Villanova on Saturday. 

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Aaron Bracy has been covering Philadelphia sports since 1996. His byline regularly appears on Associated Press stories. Big5Hoops.com is his second website dedicated to Philadelphia college basketball. Follow Bracy on X: @Aaron_Bracy and like his Facebook and Instagram pages.